Just checked the manual. It's kind of hard to see on the above picture but if you look closely between the ATX and Sata ports there is a Sata Power connection, I'm guessing that you get a cable for atleast two(hopefully 4) Sata devices.Reply

There is a SATA power connector on board - ASRock will bundle a one-to-many cable with the motherboard. I am just asking ASRock how many devices can be done via this method, will update when I have this information.Reply

That probably depends more upon the power draw of the devices as it will only send a certain number of amps per 5v and 12v line. For reference, I usually see this sort of setup used on Thin Mini-ITX boards like ASUS's Q87T, but those boards also include a ton of extras for use in embedded setups like eDP and LVDS, which this doesn't have.Reply

Very cool (with the psu on-board) this isn't anything new but it is very rare and should be done more often. Picopsus have existed for years but their development has pretty much stopped. It's very easy just to build one of those directly on board too.

Ditching the optical drive and using a mSATA drive... would have a truly compact system w/no need to use extra power/sata cables. Hopefully ASRock creates an LGA1150 version as well as other mini-itx mobo makers.Reply

Assuming the price is right this could do a lot better than a pico-PSU. The cheaper pico PSUs all need 12V bricks which are expensive; the picoPSUs that can use a cheap 19V brick are significantly more expensive because they need large DC-DC converters. If ASRock designed the board to create all the assorted low voltages needed by various components directly from 19V instead of with an intermediate 12V level they could save a lot just by having fewer voltage converters. OTOH the fact that they've also got a standard ATX hookup makes me think they might just be converting 19V to 12V at input and feeding it into a standard power distribution setup.Reply

I would definitely not call this more than fast enough on the CPU side. In highly multithreaded situations it will be more capable, but in poorly threaded applications it'd be like trying to use a Pentium 4. I know passmark isn't the most reliable benchmark ever, but for what its worth:A4-5000 multi-threaded = 1924Core 2 Duo E6850 multi-threaded = 1968 (and that's a dual core)

A4-5000 single-threaded = 593Pentium 4 2.53Ghz single-threaded = 605

Obviously its a nice CPU considering its low TDP, but it is by no means fast enough for gaming, of any kind. You'd probably have better all around performance from a Celeron 1037u based system, since they are significantly faster in single threaded performance. If you're adding a GPU, I see no reason to go with Kabini.Reply

This came up a couple years ago, there was an article that tested various then-current video cards at only 8x, 4x, and 1x lanes. 8x was no change at all, and 4x was something like 15% performance degradation.Reply

I've done some testing in multi-GPU setups where the third/fourth GPU is limited in bandwidth. It really takes a knock there. I advice using anything PCIe 2.0 x4 and below to be honest - you end up throwing money away from peak potential. That can be doubly compounded based on the CPU as well. I'm currently testing an Avoton processor with a PCIe 2.0 x4 slot and my usual high end GPUs. Results for that will be in that review, coming soon :) Reply

Hey Ian, do you know for sure that the AM1H-ITX onboard regulators can power a graphics card like the GTX 750? What's the maximum possible draw? 90 W (power supply stated in manual)-25 W (CPU)-mobo-SSD, so roughly 50-55 W? And don't you think a small card like the GTX 750 with less than half the graphics power of my R9 280X will be happy with PCIe x4? I only use PCIe x8 with the R9 280 X and with x16 it's 2 % faster on 2560x1440. On top of that, Kabini will probably more of a bottleneck than the PCIe interface, I guess. Could you run some Kabini coupled with GTX 750 gaming benchmarks? I would be interested in a low power, low budget passive gaming machine :)Reply

How do the Kabini APUs suitable for these MBs compare to Bay-Trail D Atoms or even the i3 used in the NUC? I know the TDP is quite different, but 25W is still manegeable to build a fanless system with. I'm eying an Impactics case (no coolset for this MB available yet, though)...I don't game, btw.Reply

Actually, according to some benchmarks (passmark), the Kabini is comparable to the lowest level core i3 (4010u) int he NUC. Those same benchmarks point out that the intel HD4400 significantly outperformns AMD's radeon 8400. Not that I would use either for more than just casual gaming.Reply